


They'll call me king, they'll call me rider

by anonymousAlchemist



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), One Piece
Genre: Gen, darker and grittier but not that much darker and grittier, mad max au hell yeah, the apocalypse au you know you wanted, you dont actually have to have watched fury road to read this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 16:46:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9830429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymousAlchemist/pseuds/anonymousAlchemist
Summary: They call it the Grand Line because it stretches out long and wide and endless, across plain and desert and rocky mountain, across canyon and through valley. It’s grand, it’s a line, it’s the Grand Line. They say it ends at Raftel, they say Raftel is a new Eden, the last lifeboat untouched by the ravages that the rest of the world suffers. They say Raftel has the key to saving humanity, the One Piece.There’s something important there, at least.(In which the Strawhats live in the aftermath of apocalypse and everything is the same except when it’s not.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> surprise the first thing u get from me in a year is *waves hand vaguely* this. betcha weren't expecting that

 

Here's the thing, they live in the dried and dusted remnants of apocalypse. They're the battle scarred remnants of the old world order, dripping motor oil with every footstep.

You can't live here if you don’t have conviction.   
This is no world for the weak.

They call the road here the Grand Line, it used to be called Highway 278 and Route 95 and a thousand other numbers, but these days every name is a descriptor.

Numbers and classifications are a thing of the old world.

They call it the Grand Line because it stretches out long and wide and endless, across plain and desert and rocky mountain, across canyon and through valley. It’s grand, it’s a line, it’s the Grand Line. They say it ends at Raftel, they say Raftel is a new Eden, the last lifeboat untouched by the ravages that the rest of the world suffers. They say Raftel has the key to saving humanity, the One Piece.

There’s something important there, at least.

______________

Monkey D. Luffy is born maybe a half century after the end of the world and he spends his childhood scrounging in the dirt with his brothers. Weirdly enough, he’s happy, the innocent and unknowing happiness of those who have never known another life. He runs after his brothers until they leave, promising to see him when he joins them on the road.

He’s seventeen when he sets out in a beat-up old pickup truck, not even modded, carrying no weapons but his fists and a knife.

Seventy-four miles later, the pickup truck engine sputters its last and Luffy lies against it in the baking hot sun and takes a nap. He should have died of heatstroke. A gang of roving mercenaries led by a massively ugly lady picks him up instead. He steals an automotive and a kid from them and heads for the nearest encampment.

That’s where he meets Zoro, tied up and serving as the encampment leaders’ son’s blood-bag, tied up upside down with his mouth clamped around a metal bar. Even then, he looks dangerous, his hair a shock of electric green and his arms bulging with corded muscle. The son boasts that he’s being filled with demon’s blood.

Luffy takes a single look at Zoro, smiles, and asks if Zoro would like to come with him. Zoro gives an upside down shrug and rolls his eyes. Good enough for Luffy.

They leave the encampment in ruins behind them, after Zoro finds his swords.

(And here’s the secret about Luffy: this world suits him better than the one that passed, he’s good at surviving on instinct and strength, he wouldn’t know what to do in a world where he’d spend thirteen years in a classroom and the rest of his life in a cubicle.

No, Luffy was born for the open road.)

______________

Nami is sitting by the road, wearing nothing but a twisted sheet and road dust.  
Of course, the sheet conceals at least three knives and a pistol, and her motorcycle is hidden by an outcropping rock.

“She’s obviously a trap,” Zoro says. Luffy laughs.

“We’ll pick her up anyway.”

Zoro grunts.

They stop for her and she simpers, pretending to be oh so grateful to her rescuers.

(That night, she would have hotwired their car, if not for the incident with Buggy and his misfit band).

They run into a different band of travelers, who are, strangely enough, dressed like the tattered remains of a circus. There is a scuffle, which they, of course, win, and again they’re off.

A great shell of a mansion sits on a hill. It’s strangely serene, the empty houses in the town, the mansion high up and up above. The place seems deserted. Luffy declares it their camp for the night, and his companions reluctantly agree. Luffy is enamored by the mystery town, Zoro and Nami, less so.

That night, when they camp, they’re treated to a hail of stones, large enough to sting, small enough to be non-lethal. A ghostly voice wails, “Leave this place, and never return, or the sniper king and his ghost army will get you.” They follow the voice to a the mansion-shell and find a boy and a girl and a bunch of children. The boy blusters, the girl stands firm, the boy holds a slingshot and a pouch of stones, and behind him, a whole armory’s worth of rusted rifles. r

Luffy smiles.

“Hey, you’re a pretty good shot, aren’t you?”

It’s a good night, after that.

The next morning, Kaya gives them a truck and Usopp gives her a kiss before leaving at the wheel, slingshot tucked into a back pocket.

“My dad’s out there somewhere. I’m coming with you.”

___________

Sanji is too skinny to be a chef. He’s whipcord thin, wiry, surprisingly tall, not quite skeletal but definitely unhealthy. And none of that is surprising, that’s the same description for nearly everybody driving around, except for the fact that Sanji works for the Restaurant. The Restaurant is a roving band of rigs, fitted with kitchens in the back and refrigerators and burners, each vehicle is a multicolored kaleidoscope scrawled with the word BARATIE across the sides.

“Retrofitted food trucks,” Zeff says, “from before the end of the world.”

The Restaurant’s name is Baratie but everyone just calls it the Restaurant. It’s one of those wasteland legends that spreads from traveler to traveler, from town to fortress. If you bring them your raw foodstuffs they’ll turn them into a meal that’ll make your mouth water and your eyes weep.

(Another legend: if you are truly starving, go to the truck with the curls and flames and the chef there will feed you for free).

Sanji is a fixture of the place, just like Zeff. None of the other cooks know where he comes from, but he’s been there since the Restaurant was just Zeff and a single rig. He’s not Zeff’s son, he doesn’t look a thing like the head chef, he spends all his time either cooking or fighting with Zeff, and their screaming matches are something to behold.

(Sanji gives half his rations to starving travelers. Zeff pretends not to notice and gives him extra supplies. The shitty little eggplant is too skinny, after all.)

Zeff has a prosthetic leg. Sanji is never going to leave the Restaurant. They don’t talk about it.

“Svalbard,” Sanji says. “Have you heard of it? Before the end of the old world, some shitty scientists locked a bunch of seeds in a vault, in case anything ever happened. Can you imagine what might be in there? Plants that we don’t have anymore?”

“Someday, I’m going to go there. And I’m going to bring back all sorts of seeds, and plant all sorts of things.”

It takes persuasion, an attack by too-cocky bandits, and judicious and rather ill-applied manipulation for Sanji to agree to come with them.

And of course Nami had taken Ussop’s modded-truck, and of course they go after her in Sanji’s food truck, rattling around between the extra potatoes and onions that the other cooks had snuck into the trunk.

__________

Sickness kills on the Grand Line. They’re not sure where Nami picked up an infection (at least they’re guessing it’s an infection), but she’s gonna die without treatment (antibiotics? Aspirin? Immunization? All they know are words, unattached to the meanings).

It’s sheer luck that leads them to Drum, and Chopper and Dr. Kureha.

Chopper’s interesting. He’s a teenage kid self-conscious of his cleft lip, who wears a pink hat festooned with antlers that belonged to a doctor who mostly pretended to know what he was doing, who was a part time biologist trying to bring back the cherry trees, who claimed that “This whole town used to be full of them, when I was a kid.” Drum is barely a town, these days. Chopper’s parents abandoned him while passing through, because of the lip, probably, he says glumly, although maybe they just couldn’t support a baby in the wasteland.

“You wanna come with us?” Luffy asks.

___________

They run into Ace in the middle of the desert, and they run into him because he looks like a dead body, shirt over his face and not moving. When Sanji nudges him with a foot he lets out a loud snore and Luffy laughs, before shaking Ace awake. Ace has a motorbike and in the years past he had joined the Whitebeard Collective, a network of riders and drivers who all relied on the protection of the old man they call Pops. It sounds sort of weird but Ace seems like a good guy, and he’s Luffy’s brother, so they break out precious glass bottles of rum and have a celebration late into the night.

___________

The first thing anyone notices about Robin when she takes her jacket off is the tattoos. Her arms, her back, her stomach, are all covered in tiny text. She’s a History Woman, too young to be one but carrying their markings anyway.

Her story comes out in bits and pieces. She was raised by History men and women, historians descended from scientists and politicians. They lived in the capitol of the old world, holding camp in the remains of a large political complex, a series of towering buildings all marked with the emblem of what Robin called the Adam Tree. There are libraries here, vast rooms filled with dusty tomes. This is where Robin spent her childhood.

The inhabitants there keep the last documents from before the end of the world, the correspondence between world leaders, scientists, military leaders, etcetera etcetera.

The History men and women know who killed the world, and they die for it.

A carefully planned raid on the building by those who wish to erase all memory of the age that passed, those who are powerful in the age that has come and are afraid of upsets to the status quo, are afraid of the old technologies written in the libraries. (Their names are not said except in whispers. The euphemism, the World Government, as if there is enough of a world left to be governed).

Robin is the only survivor. She is sent into the night by her caretakers on a lone motorbike, crying as she speeds into the darkness, carrying the few texts she was able to carry.

Ohara burns behind her.

In the passing of the seasons that follow, Robin copies the texts onto her skin, permanent records as long as she might live. She is pursued, intermittently but relentlessly by the arsonists that burned Ohara. She learns to fight, to steal, to lie.

_________________

Alabasta is the closest thing to a functioning civilization they’ve seen so far. They could stay. They could plant their feet and scrap their automotives for parts and build lives.

But, Raftel. One Piece.   
_________________

Watertown is called Watertown because it’s the only natural source of water for miles around. It’s a looming fortress, suspicious of outsiders, sending massive Aquacola rigs off on the Grand Line in return for supplies-metals, food, explosives. The people of Watertown are vaguely xenophobic, skeptical of outsiders.

Watertown used to be ruled over by a madman named Immortan Joe, but that’s the past and another country, and these days it’s mostly the sons and daughters of the Warboys and Sisters who govern the place.

Watertown has a thriving black market, that legend has it, is presided over by a metal automaton. “The Organic Mechanic made him,” they whisper.

That’s a lie. Franky made himself out of the pulped-up flesh of Cutty Flam and a junkyards worth of scrap metal. Franky’s a genius; Franky’s a crook; Franky’s the brother of the current head of council. Between the two of them, nothing goes on in Watertown that they don’t know about.

He makes sure that the black market stays on the gray side of black, no human trafficking, no drugs worse than coke, nothing that kills other than bullets. He runs a garage that nobody knows about, that everybody knows about. He lusts after the massive machines, the sleek speed demons that existed before the apocalypse which only exist in magazine pages these days.

________

They run into Garp on their way out of Watertown, and the crew is amazed to find that Luffy is not just sprung from the road, full grown and made of rubber tire and asphalt. It’s a fraught but cheerful meeting.

“Why’d you leave him at Fuschia?” Nami asks.

Garp sighs. “He didn’t need me. I had responsibilities.”

The road beckons, and they leave in their shiny new rig, Franky at the wheel.   
_____

They find Brooke by following the music.

Brooke wears makeup, he paints his face in a skull in remembrance of who he used to be, of the friends he left behind. In the past world he would have been an aging rocker, in this world he’s a fragment of a time forgotten.

To the rest of the crew, Brooke seems impossibly old in a world where most live fast, die young, leave malnourished corpses. Brooke laughs when they tell him that, saying he’s only sixty-something, maybe, seventy, who knows, time doesn’t mean anything and he’s been preserved by the dust - and that in the Past there were much older men and women than he. Age, it seems, is a luxury these days.

He was young (maybe five?) when the world went to dust, but he remembers a time when the world was green, when water flowed free and plants were commonplace enough to be squashed under feet. He remembers verdancy, he remembers smog clouding the sky and he remembers skyscrapers and the sound of the city, electricity shining in the darkness and no stars to be seen. Luffy and Ussop and Chopper prod him for stories, and he obliges with a laugh, talking about flying machines and oceans and skyscrapers, about playing music on a stage with thousands of voices chanting “Soul King, Soul King, Soul King!” and neon flickering out as the apocalypse kills the lights. Robin takes notes. Sanji and Zoro pause their fighting. Franky puts down his tinkering. Nami closes her eyes and imagines.

“It was another world,” he tells them, “It was an easier one, but maybe not a better one, yohoho.”

And this world isn’t so bad, really. The sky is blue and the air is crisp, they’ve got a rig and they’ve got their automotives kicking up a trail of dust, they’ve got dreams of paradise and blind conviction.

They’ve got laughter and smiles and each other to rely on. 

Grand Line stretches out like a unfurling string before them, and somewhere beyond the horizon Raftel and One Piece wait.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is, if I’m being honest, a floridly purple prose outline more than it is an actual story, and one i wrote a while back and never posted. 
> 
> the Svalbard Seed Vault is a real thing, I thought it made a nice analogue to All Blue. 
> 
> Brook lived through the apocalypse and was a rising star in the postapocalyptic music world. He and his band, RUMBAR, wore skull makeup for their performances. Brooke is the only one to survive past thirty-five, and he wears the makeup to remember them. 
> 
> The Strawhats have a large rig -think interstate hauling truck-y thing except more modded, Sanji’s seriously modded food truck that serves as a kitchen, a few motorbikes and a seriously retrofitted automotive built from the remnants of the Going Merry. Generally, Franky drives the rig, Sanji drives the truck, and Ussop drives the Going Merry. Nami and Zoro both usually drive motorcycles, although Zoro sometimes just sleeps in the shotgun seat of the rig. Chopper usually rides with Ussop. Robin rides with Franky or Sanji sometimes, and does a lot of driving as well, sometimes going off on her own on a motorbike. Luffy could be doing anything. Brook tends to ride a bike or he’s got a setup on the top of the Sunny sort of like the Doof Warrior, and he plays music as they ride. It’s better than any radio. Generally, everyone ends up driving everything at one point or another and trading off whenever. 
> 
> I thought about just having them have the one rig, and while that’s pretty doable, I also thought that the strawhats would probably kill each other if they had to sit in such close proximity for that long a time...
> 
> When they’re on the road and between adventures they end up driving maybe eight to twelve hours a day. They’re not usually in a super hurry, but they make good time. 
> 
> When they park for the night or make camp or whatever they tend to circle up for safety’s sake. The inside of the rig is three fourths storage space for supplies or whatever, and one fourth living area-type thing, whose side can be swung up to create an awning with fabric that an be nailed into the ground as a tent. That’s generally where they end up sleeping. They have two person watches and one lucky person gets to sleep the entire night through. 
> 
> I imagine that in this world, they’re all vaguely more practical people, concerned with survival as well as their dreams. Because this is a world where food, water, shelter, safety, are all in much shorter supply even compared to the normal one piece world. They all grew up in the ruins of civilization, and they know it. Of course, that doesn’t stop them from chasing their goals with a particularly reckless abandon. Who would they be if they didn’t?


End file.
